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Reviews by ultraglorious

65

Singleplayer Review

The original Crysis and its sequel, Warhead, are among my favourite shooters. The openness of the world allowed you to find creative solutions to missions. With Crysis 2, Crytek took a much more linear approach to level design in the vein of most modern FPS releases and placed a greater emphasis on their story; decisions which I felt were detrimental to the series. Crysis 3 promised to be a combination of the two, but for the most part it failed in that regard.

Level designed has been opened up somewhat, insofar that the corridors you are travelling down have been widened - sometimes quite significantly - but areas still only have one entrance and exit. While this in itself is not a problem, it does not recapture the feeling from Crysis that you can attack an objective however you please. It does, however, occasionally allow you to choose which order you do objectives in.

The story started in Crysis 2 is back in full force; a blessing or a curse depending on how much you enjoyed it the first time. While I have never expected much of the series' storytelling, I appreciated the first game's relative minimalism. Crytek's attempts at poignancy and gravitas fall flat and I was particularly disappointed when the ending came down to serendipity.

If I found the gameplay particularly enjoyable, something I do not recall having any issues with previously, the story's issues could be easily overlooked. The only difference between 3 and the previous entries that I can point to as having made it less enjoyable is the introduction of the bow. Having loved the bows in the Far Cry 3 and Tomb Raider I was fully expecting to love it here; and I do, in theory. Crysis' bow is a great weapon and perhaps my favourite in the game; at full tension it one-shots most enemies in the game, and you can fire it while cloaked. These are also the reasons why it ruined my enjoyment of the game; it is so powerful that you rarely have a reason to use anything else. It being the most useful weapon, I used it for the majority of the game and subsequently got quite bored. Perhaps it's my own fault for not changing up my style, but I didn't feel the game ever gave me a reason to want to.